EFEKT_Studio said
@Vahid – If you could shortly try to answer 2 questions, that would really be awesome. 1.) Are we getting new search system on each marketplace? 2.) Are we ever getting video rollovers at videohive? Thank you and keep up the good work!

Hi Efekt!

1. Yes – are have a way cooler search system under the hood. You can see it in operation on 3dOcean and PhotoDune, but we’ve not tapped into into its power properly. We’ll be looking next year to make significant inroads on search. but action speaks louder than words so lets see what Justin & John can deliver next year.

2. Not sure if that is in scope for anytime soon. If we want to get serious about video then its sounds like a requirement, but one that probably has a lower priority. We’d also want to recode the video to allow for HTML5 players, and also reduce the size so that playback is faster on previews. Its a problem right now at least here in Australia and I guess else where also.

If all authors sales drop during the bundle, Envato will be losing money. I got a boost of sales during the bundle, but the top bar bothered me. It just feels spammy, and that’s why, I believe, many people are upset about it.
My personal observation: Growth during this year in ThemeForest was slow (buyers) comparing to last years. However, there are more new authors and established authors publishes even more themes. It’s harder to sell now. A great theme used to make it big. I think, the golden days are gone.

Nothing we’ve seen to date indicates the bundle cannibalises normal sales. Last month’s bundle did quite well and it was a spectacular month in terms of sales even excluding the bundle.

We’re trying to learn now why the holiday bundle has been so slow – not sure if its the theme, the content or the timing. I suspect the theme, but that’s the easy answer. Alex, our marketing guy is working to see how we can optimise content, timing and messaging. So expect to see some experiments especially next week as we go into the final 24 hours.

ThemeForest slowing… ah, no. Its still growing pretty darn fast, but not as fast as year 1 where it grew like the bean stalk in the story about Jack. But yes, there probably is a lot more competition and the content quality is really amazing these days.

crozer saidYou are prioritizing things (read features, visual changes, bundles, etc.) over requests that we, as authors, consider essential to the positive growth of the marketplace(s).

Instead of the 50+ design-related changes you have done in the past 3 years, you could have improved the rating system. Instead of the useless bar to my left, you could have put the reply-button on the comments-section under each reply. Instead of adding the “Upload item” feature to our dashboards (which, I am sorry, but I find completely senseless), you could have simply enabled us to see all of our followers, you could have dedicated 3 months to producing a good searching-system, shopping carts, a way for authors to communicate with buyers anonymously, and oh so much more.

Guys, it’s not about throwing rocks at you, but you keep doing struff that we (or at least I) can’t really comprehend. We have asked for features that are simply essential, necessary to the marketplaces, and we have received exactly the opposite (with some exceptions of course). I stood behind your back when the requests were 1, 3, 4, 5 months old.. but it’s been 3 years! The Envato marketplaces have always been strong because of their strong relationship with the community. If you decide that adding, for example, a “Upload item” feature to the author dashboard will enhance the author’s UX, then tell us why, talk to us.

Keep in mind that Bundles don’t affect development…

What we have been prioritising this year has been increasing team capacity (the Dev team has doubled) but unfortunately we’ve spent lots of time on backendy (is that a word) work. I think the tide is now changing… but perhaps John Viner’s post says it better.

That all said, we, especially Justin French who is doing lots of thinking about product roadmap for next year, certainly appreciate your input on these points. They are good points.

vahid said
ThemeForest slowing… ah, no. Its still growing pretty darn fast, but not as fast as year 1 where it grew like the bean stalk in the story about Jack. But yes, there probably is a lot more competition and the content quality is really amazing these days.

From many author’s observation, the competition and quality of content alone is not the reason for apparent sales down/split. May be the overall sales isn’t affected but there is an issue about balancing exposure between new themes and popular ones. As a side effect, popular files are “too much familiar” and new files are “too much alien” for buyers. So definitely ThemeForest needs a special effort to expand ways of initial exposure and also avoid over saturated exposure for popular ones.

Just a suggestion, if another page added for “Popular New files” which filters from recent 2-3 weeks (or a month), it will be helpful for both buyers as well as authors. Especially the themes that stands different from standard designs will get improved exposure since such files have decent sales in the initial 2-3 days (but never manages to enter weekly popular – 50 sales is current base cut-off which is too high). Also such a page will show more than 90% different files than current all time popular page. So buyers get one more page/criteria/choice to pick files.

Any solution to expand initial exposure is fine, just pointed the above suggestion since it is very simple like replicating current weekly popular page with minor tweak.

I will took the opportunity to say that something is wrong with the development and implementation of new features on the marketplace.

I don’t doubt that the development team is working on stuff behind the scenes but the rare changes that we see, followed a bad formula.

Usually for every change in the marketplace, couple of bugs are introduced. Every time a button is moved from position A to position B some random unrelated marketplace functionality is broken and need to be fixed after people make threads on forums.

And most of the time we still try to figure out what particular advantage those changes bring up to the marketplace.

Something needs to be changed about this.

Also if is possible, the UX developer should make a thread on forum so we can understand what he want to do with the interface.

Nice to have you in this thread Vahid,still, maybe its just me, but most of your answers regarding new staff you hired are related in marketing, adwords, research in sales etc. Maybe i am wrong but it seems you are trying constantly to attract more visitors/buyers, but you are doing it in a way to direct people on envato pages offering products. This is not a question/problem here, its after they get on for example themeforest. I think (correct me if i am wrong) you have a lot of visitors the number in the footer is growing really fast. The revolt you are getting is from author point of view and as it was mentioned b4, after 20 of so pages of posts someone from staff comes on and gives an explanation or answer to some questions and expose some things like ( Alex our marketing guy) several times which does not really tell us anything. The main problem is that its getting harder and harder to sell, from your point of you its the same if there’s 50 items with 1 sale or 1 with 50, for authors it isn’t. If someone works like crazy for god knows how long and gets 20 sales in a month then he will look for alternatives. And once top authors start noticing that, there will be a problem. For know only thing that can bring you normal cash flow is quantity and that needs rapid development which leads to copy’s and eventually to quality lost.

The main problem is that you guys do not notice it yet, since the words the authors throw around here just do not reflect on the situation, but once it starts annoying “production line” its just the matter of time when products, which are the core of the system, start to degrade and sales start dropping and once it gets on that steep hill down it gets harder and harder to turn it back.

Marketing shouldn’t be the priority here, yet it seems that is your main concern, development trough innovation should lead and marketing follow. Not vice versa.

Anps said
Well the problem is that dev is falling behind, and I still am 100% behind my statement that marketing should not lead. Secondly, we don’t get any real answers.

Not True. If you remember, a year ago, there was lots of down times. I think devs focused on actually running the markets and scaling them (2.12m is an insane number). They have limited time like all humans, and maybe the dev team didn’t grow in number proportionally.

I agree, though, that the support and answers are very bad and something need to be done about them (especially support)

Can someone fix this on Bundle FAQ ? It says Photodune items can be used more than once, which sounds as if allowed to use more than one project:

From Bundle FAQ pdf:

G) What license are the files distributed under?
All files in the bundle are licensed to you under one regular license for each item. To see how
a regular license may be used and to read more information, please see this introduction and
these articles. Most licenses are for a single use, meaning you can use each item once in one
end project. For PhotoDune items, each item can be used more than once – see the PhotoDune
regular license.

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